


The Greatest Hazard

by palmaceae



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmaceae/pseuds/palmaceae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“To try is to risk failure, but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.” –Leo Buscaglia</p><p>Five times The Five took a risk, and one time they didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roseandheather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/gifts).



> I don’t know if this was quite what you were looking for, it wasn’t quite what I meant to write and I've only managed to finish 2/6 so far thanks to personal issues cropping up at the last minute. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it to some degree.

“Helen, much as I usually enjoy your utterly charming little idiosyncrasies, this is ridiculous,” James said after he pulled his foot out of a patch of particularly foul looking mud with a soft plop and got a good look at what was once his new boot.

Although Nigel had made a similar but distinctly ungentlemanlike pronouncement not but five minutes ago after an unfortunate run in with a hanging branch, Helen had not deemed it necessary to respond; Nigel was somewhat cranky even on the best of his days, and getting a crack on the skull was not bound to improve his temper. However, from James, such an accusation was intolerable. She whirled around to confront him best as she could in her skirts – which caught on a bush and held her captive unless she wanted to risk a tear, and thus, she settled on glaring at him instead of grabbing the nearest branch and giving him a goose egg that rivaled Nigel’s.

From a few meters behind her, John was suddenly struck with a fit of coughing that suspiciously sounded like suppressed laughter.

“It’s easy to be enthusiastic about nearly anything after that much wine,” Nikola chimed in. “Although that was really a lovely rendition of Jabberwocky you did with John, James, I’ve never heard it performed with quite such emotion before, ‘come to my arms, my beamish boy’ and all.”

“Yes, well,” said James tartly, “Helen, I’ve given it a bit more thought since then, and I do have to say that despite whatever your father has told you, Carroll was quite mad, and I must be as well to have agreed to go hunting for such a thing as a snark. Do you see a bathing-machine anywhere? We should be in Margate walking down the pier, not sloshing around in a forest.”

“I don’t know, James. I, for one, was looking forward to tasting that meager and hollow crispness served with greens,” said John.

“We don’t need to go hunting. If you’re looking for a creature with ambition that gets up far too late, look no further than Mr. Tesla,” added Nigel.

“Ha ha, but I have a sense of humor,” said Nikola.

“That’s debatable,” said John. “I say we call off this hunt and string him up.”

“You always say that,” said Nikola.

“And there we have it! The proof is complete, if only I’ve stated it thrice, which I most certainly have,” said John.

“The snark is a creature about the size of a large dog with skin that can appear to be either reptilian, feathered or furred depending on its habitat. My father and Mr. Dodgson came across one of these snarks in this very area nearly fifteen years ago, so forgive me to jumping to conclusions considering the recent bizarre reports of animal attacks in this forest. Mr. Dodgson may have had an eccentric sense of humor, what with thimbles and forks, but I assure you, I do not,” said Helen.

James and John looked sufficiently chastised.

“But Helen,” Nigel protested, “what if it’s a boojum?”

Helen yanked her skirts free, pulled them up so they would cease dragging on the floor, and ignored the looks of shock from her fellow abnormal hunters for doing something as brazen as showing her ankles.

“Is your courage perfect? And that, after all, is the thing that one needs with a snark.”

She marched deeper into the forest, uncaring if the rest followed her or not but utterly counting on the fact that they would.

The four men scrambled to keep up.


	2. Chapter 2

“Really James, you ought to take a good look at yourself. Do you rather enjoy looking like a shaggy dog?”

“I have better things to do than primp for Helen.”

John turns from the mirror, razor in hand, shaving cream on his lip.

“Primp and preen like a woman? Are you questioning my masculinity?”

James is about to respond seriously before he registers the tiny smirk on John’s face.

“Well, yes. You know Nigel’s always said you’re a sordid bugger.”

John flicks the razor and neatly splatters James’ coat with specks of cream.

“Damn you!”

John smirks more broadly and turns back to the mirror. James spies John’s new cravat lying on a chair, swiftly seizes it and tosses it into the basin. John roars and grabs the cravat, but it’s too late.

James takes one look at John’s face and makes a run for the door, but John teleports across the room and blocks the way, and James crashes into John. John grasps James’ shirt and pulls James against him to take advantage of his height and glare menacingly down.

“This is war,” declares John, and although James knows John is talking about ruined clothes and retribution, there is another war going on – a subtler, deeper one that wracks James’ heart and soul every time he looks into John’s blue eyes only to see Helen Magnus reflected back at him.

He feels John’s breath against his cheek, the warmth of his long body even through all those layers of the clothes, the gentle brush of a knuckle against his neck. They set aside those schoolboy games when they entered the hallowed gates of Oxford and took their places as men and scholars (although James never thought of it as a game, and there’s plenty to be said about the love that dare not speak its name in the Classics).

Most importantly, John set it aside. John met Helen Magnus, who swept him away like a housemaid attacking a mouse with a broom; John never stood a chance.

John stands before him, Helen’s ownership branded into his skin with the faded bruise left on his neck, the faint whiff of perfume that always seems to cling to his clothes, the locket under his shirt. But those marks are ephemeral and hidden, and James is in the here and the now with his own hands suddenly on John’s forearms and his lips centimeters away from the prize.

James remembers how, when they were very young, they would write each other secret messages in the frosted windows in the dining room at Winchester, tracing letters one by one with warm fingertips onto the chilly panes and then watching the cold slowly reclaim its territory. James always enjoyed knowing that their messages were hidden in plain sight, just waiting to be revealed by a puff of breath. But come spring, the windows would defrost, and alas, their secrets disappeared, wiped away by the rays of the warm sun.

Is there one final message still left for James, just waiting for him to bring it out with a touch of warmth, or has Helen in her utter radiance burned it all away, making John as transparent as those glass windows? Will the glass shatter if James puts too much pressure on it, possibly mendable but never quite the same again?

There’s only one way to find out.

“Yes,” James slowly says. "It is."

He leans forward.


End file.
